Interactive video distribution systems – Operator interface – To facilitate tuning or selection of video signal
Reexamination Certificate
1998-03-09
2003-08-12
Srivastava, Vivek (Department: 2611)
Interactive video distribution systems
Operator interface
To facilitate tuning or selection of video signal
C725S049000, C725S040000, C725S039000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06606748
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information providing method and to an information providing system for applying the method, and in particular to a method and apparatus for providing, to a plurality of users, information consisting both of data which are altered only infrequently and data which are updated frequently, such as television broadcast program schedules.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, various types of information providing system have been developed whereby an information providing apparatus (i.e., server), dispatches various types of information to the information receiving apparatuses of respective users (i.e., clients) via respective data transmission paths. The transmission paths may for example be implemented in the Internet, or in an intranet of a large corporation, or data may be sent to the clients as broadcast television signals, in the form of character data which are transmitted in the vertical blanking intervals of a broadcast television signal (e.g., the VBI method). In general, the information providing function is performed on an interactive basis, whereby a user can transmit a request to the information providing apparatus for some specific desired information. The types of information which are transmitted by such an information providing system can consist for example of program schedule information for multi-channel television broadcasts, catalog information concerning articles for sale, etc. In the case of television broadcast schedules, a user might for example transmit to the information providing apparatus a request for a complete program schedule for one or more television channels, relating to one or more specified days, or for detailed information concerning one specific broadcast of a program.
With a prior art type of information providing apparatus, the information providing apparatus responds to such a request sent by a user from a terminal by, for example, converting all of the the requested information into HTML format data, then dispatching all of the resultant data to the terminal via an Internet communication path, or by broadcast radio waves which are transmitted to the user's television receiver through a technique such as VBI.
In practice, the information which is provided by such an information providing system will basically contain information which changes very infrequently (or is never changed), and information which will often be changed. In the case of a television broadcast schedule for example, a certain program might be broadcast at the same time of day on a specific weekday of each week throughout the year, while some or all of the attributes (program name, performers, etc.) might also remain unchanged over the same period. However with a prior art type of information providing apparatus, irrespective of whether a user has previously received such information, that same information may be sent to that user many times. In the case of such information being dispatched via a transmission path which uses a data communication facility such as the Internet, such repetitive transmission of the same information to a user represents a significant waste of communication time, and a corresponding unnecessary increase in communication costs. Also, if the information is transmitted as HTML format data, then since this results in additional data being sent in order to achieve such formatting (i.e., in addition to the data expressing the actual information that is to be conveyed to a user.), the communication cost is further increased. This has been an obstacle to the widespread adoption of such types of information providing system for general household use.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an objective of the present invention to overcome the problems of the prior art set out hereinabove, by providing an information providing method and an information providing system for implementing the method, whereby the communication costs and complexity of processing which are associated with the dispatching of information to users can be reduced, and whereby information can be supplied to users with communication costs which are matched to the services provide.
To achieve the above objectives, an information providing method and information providing system according to the present invention have the following basic features. An information providing apparatus processes original information which serves as a data base, and which is updated at regular or irregular intervals, to separate the original information into first data which are substantially fixed, i.e., which are known to change only relatively infrequently or which undergo only relatively small amounts of variation when changes occur due to updating, and second data consisting of data which are known to change relatively frequently or which undergo relatively large amounts of variation when changes occur due to updating. When the first data and second data have first been respectively generated, the information providing apparatus stores these as respectively separate data categories, and transmits them to each information receiving apparatus of respective users to be stored therein. Thereafter (until an updated set of the first data is again generated) the information providing apparatus updates the contents of the second data which are stored at the information providing apparatus, each time that a new set of original information is acquired. Specifically, the information providing apparatus compares any newly acquired original information with the stored first data, to thereby obtain (as updated second data) any data which are contained in the new original information but not in the stored first data. The updated second data are then stored at the information providing apparatus. All of such updated second data (or parts of the updated second data which are found to be necessary at the time of a input of a request for data by a user) are also transmitted to the information receiving apparatuses of users.
It can thus be understood that the first data and second data are transmitted to each user with respectively different intervals between the transmissions of the first data and transmissions of the second data. Specifically, after initially transmitting the first data to a user, the period between subsequent transmissions of updated first data to the user will be substantially long (or only a single, initial transmission of the first data will be executed). Transmissions of updated second data to the information receiving apparatus of a user however will occur at relatively short intervals, for example each time that updated original information is acquired by the information providing apparatus.
Each information receiving apparatus is configured to be capable of receiving the first data and second data from the information providing apparatus, to store the received first data and second data as respectively separate data categories, and to perform reconstitution processing of the stored first data and second data to recover desired parts of the original information, when requested by a user.
The system is preferably configured such that records are maintained by the information providing apparatus of data (in particular, updated second data) which have already been transmitted to each information receiving apparatus, and such that, whenever updated original information are acquired by the information providing apparatus and the second data stored at the information providing apparatus are updated accordingly, the second data held at each information receiving apparatus are left unchanged until a request for data output is supplied to an information receiving apparatus. At that time, the request contents are sent to the information providing apparatus, which then judges whether it is necessary to send updated second data to that information receiving apparatus in order to correctly service the request. If so, the updated second data are transmitted, and stored at that information receiving apparatu
Kato Fumiyuki
Kushiki Yoshiaki
Shikatani Yukio
Soma Kenji
Tanaka Nobuaki
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